A woman who
died during
an exorcism on
January
30, twice failed to rise from the dead thereby thwarting predictions by
persons "very sensitive to the Lord".

Mrs Joan
Vollmer, 49,
lived on a pig
farm
near Dimboola in Western Victoria. She suffered from schizophrenia, had
at times been institutionalised.

On January 23
husband
Ralph Vollmer,
54,
saw his wife dancing outside, yelling and wildly waving her arms. Mr
Vollmer,
nominally of the Salvation Army, attended Bible meetings of a small
charismatic
group. He telephoned the local leader John Reichenbach, 38, and wife
Leanne,
30, and the exorcism started.

Days of
prayers and
holding Mrs Vollmer
down
followed. Two more cult members joined in, about January 28. Allegedly
Mrs Vollmer had 10 demons in her including the "spirit of filth", the
"spirit
of abuse" and "Legion" a spirit with the strength of 2,000. Mrs Vollmer
allegedly displayed abnormal strength, "read our minds" and swelled up
as though pregnant.

On Saturday,
January 30,
further help
arrived
from Melbourne 450km away in the form of Matthew Paul Nuske, 22, an
assistant
green-keeper, footballer, and secret exorcist. He ran cling-wrap around
the house seven times and over the roof. Then the holding down, the
prayers
and the commanding of the demons in Jesus name to come out continued.

On February 3
on TV
Vollmer explained:
"there
were some terrible hissing sounds; some froth came out of her mouth.
The
lights went out of her eyes instantly the moment the demons came out."
This occurred late afternoon after which Nuske left. The death was not
immediately reported: "Because…we received…phone calls from people…very
sensitive to the Lord…that the Lord was going to raise her up."

By Monday,
February 1,
the body had
swollen
in the 40-degree heat (104 fahrenheit), was stinking and decomposing,
and
"blowflies and things" were gathering!

At midday the
decision
was made to
report
the death and a second resurrection date was set to coincide with the
funeral
at Horsham on Friday February 5.

Said Vollmer
in the TV
report: "I do
not
believe; I know this will happen. The whole thing has been God's plan
from
the very beginning and his name is going to be glorified like its never
been before. Before her body is lowered into the grave he is going to
raise
her up again. And I hope and pray that your cameras will be there…
because
the Lord wants the world to see this."

In a different
TV report
Derrin Hinch
interviewed
Catholic priest Father John Shanley who had performed exorcisms since
1978.

Said Father
Shanley:
"Things like that
[as
in the movie The Exorcist] can happen. People begin to throw
up.
About a teaspoon of black stuff.

"An invisible
thing hits
me… when I
feel
it leaving or if I'm under attack… It grabs me around the hips… like an
electric current was hitting you or a coldness that pierces you to the
bones."

The Father
added that
demon possession
could
not be solely a mental symptom because it involved muscle movements
which
can't consciously be performed and because exorcisms are only attempted
after medical diagnosis and help has failed.

In April 1991
the Roman
Catholic Church
permitted
an exorcism in America to be filmed and shown on TV. A young woman,
"Gina",
was shown being held down while she struggled and shouted
incomprehensibly.
Reverend James LeBar of the Archdio-cese of New York stated that
exorcism
was needed when medical explanations had been excluded and/or the
person
manifested great strength, levitation, clairvoyance and speaking in
languages
they had not studied.

In Adelaide
the Anglican
Church,
Catholic
Church, Uniting Church and Christian Revival Crusade all perform
exorcisms.

In the New
Testament the
casting out of
"devils"
and "unclean spirits" is mentioned dozens of times in the first three
Gospels – Matthew, Mark and Luke
– only on
four occasions in Acts and then no
more.

A report in
PSYCHOLOGY
TODAY said: "In
a
recent study of 27 patients with religious delusions, Dr Littlewood
found
that three were possessed by the devil and eighteen by the Holy Ghost."
(Volume 3, No.1 p.29)

In the Vollmer
case the
alleged demons
were
anchored to the womb. We're told that they were forced out via the
stomach,
throat and mouth. Police confirmed that Mrs Vollmer died of internal
injuries.

Hours before
the burial
Mr Vollmer
still
declared that he had received further "promises" of his wife's
resurrection.

Present at the
funeral
were about 30
journalists
and photographers, 50 mourners and scores of spectators. When the
coffin
was lowered and the wife didn't step out Mr Vollmer hypothesised that
she
liked her new home too much to return to this world.

(M)

Church
in NewAge satan
fight.

(The Advertiser, March
4, 1995, p. 12)

(Reprinted in
Investigator
50, September 1996, courtesy of The Advertiser)

By JOHN
DRIBLANE

The Catholic
Church has
revealed it is
performing
around six exorcisms a year in Adelaide.

This
confirmation comes
as a leading
Anglican
clergyman blames New Age fortune tellers for a surge of interest in
Satanism
in South Australia.

Catholic
exorcisms are
performed by a
"deliverance
team" which includes a priest appointed by the Archbishop, Dr Leonard
Faulkner.

One of the
co-ordinators, Sister Pat
Kenny,
said yesterday doctors and psychiatrists were consulted before deciding
whether to perform an exorcism.

"Exorcism
doesn't bear
logical
explanation
because it is part of the mystery of the spiritual dimension of human
life,"
she said. "If you don't believe in spirituality you won't believe in
exorcism."

The Catholic
rite of
exorcism must be
performed
by a priest "endowed with piety, knowledge, prudence and integrity of
life",
according to Church law. The deliverance team recites prayers in the
company
of the person possessed by the evil spirit.

Sister Kenny
said the
person and the
team
prepared well for the ceremony.

"You don't go
into
battle unarmed," she
said.

"It's a real
fight, like
trying to get
out
of a sort of hell.

"All sorts of
strange
things happen.
I've
seen people cringe when they are sprinkled with holy water.

"Sometimes the
person is
in a
semi-conscious
state and a voice speaks out of them and it's not the person's own
voice.

"When you call
the
person's name a weak
little
voice will answer, 'yes'."

The team has
also
exorcised spirits
from
people's homes.

Spirituality

An Anglican
clergyman,
Reverend David
Binns,
who says he has performed dozens of exorcisms – or "deliverances" –
from
his ministry at St Luke's Church, in the city, said society was turning
back to spirituality, but not always in a good way.

"Many people
are going
to clairvoyants
and
astrologers for guidance," he said.

"They are
touching on
the spiritual and
do
not realise that eventually this can lead to witchcraft and satanism.

"Once you head
down that
spiritual path
you
can go further and further. There are evil spirits around.

"The yuppies
are
probably more involved
in
this (the occult) than the poor. They are searching for something
spiritual
because science has let them down and they won't turn to Christianity."

One of
Adelaide's
best-known
astrologers
and tarot card readers, known simply as Anne-Elisabeth, said people who
criticised astrology usually knew nothing about it.

It was an
accurate
science, based on
planetary
movements, and had no connection with satanism. Some of her clients had
been seeing her for 17 years.

"People doing
New Age
things are
usually
not critical of other people's beliefs," Anne-Elisabeth said. "We don't
criticise others for going to church or reading the Bible."

The issue of
exorcism
rose to national
prominence
after Victorian woman Mrs Joan Vollmer, 49, died during an exorcism
ritual
at her Wimmera farmhouse in January, 1993.

Two of
the people
involved were later
jailed
for manslaughter, but Mrs Vollmer's husband Ralph, 56, was acquitted of
the charge.